The Right of Nature and Political Disobedience: Hobbes’s Puzzling Thought Experiment

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-88
Author(s):  
Susanne Sreedhar
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
The Right

scholarly journals A Thought Experiment on Sustainable Management of the Earth System

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jobst Heitzig ◽  
Wolfram Barfuss ◽  
Jonathan F. Donges
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Game Theory ◽  
Optimal Control ◽  
Sustainable Management ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Right ◽  
Safe Operating ◽  
Qualitative Decision

We introduce and analyse a simple formal thought experiment designed to reflect a qualitative decision dilemma humanity might currently face in view of climate change. In it, each generation can choose between just two options, either setting humanity on a pathway to certain high wellbeing after one generation of suffering, or leaving the next generation in the same state as this one with the same options, but facing a continuous risk of permanent collapse. We analyse this abstract setup regarding the question of what the right choice would be both in a rationality-based framework including optimal control, welfare economics and game theory, and by means of other approaches based on the notions of responsibility, safe operating spaces, and sustainability paradigms. Despite the simplicity of the setup, we find a large diversity and disagreement of assessments both between and within these different approaches.

The Good Green Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Hale
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
The Right

This chapter addresses the book’s core distinction by contrasting the right and the good. It utilizes a thought experiment – the Parable of Wicked and Wild – to argue that the imperative of justification is paramount to building a viable environmental ethics. Such an environmentalism would seek to build a “viridian commonwealth” in which citizens and industries act with and for reasons that are or could be subjected to the scrutiny of all citizens.

EXISTENTIAL MEANING OF HUMAN DESIGN PROJECTS

Chelovek RU ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 229-243
Author(s):  
Pavel Tishchenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Pain Relief ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Existential Meaning ◽  
The World ◽  
Design Projects ◽  
Main Representative ◽  
The Right ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
New Time ◽  
The Way

The idea of human design rests in the heart of European humanist project. The existential meaning of the idea of human design is analyzed. A piece of the work by J. Pico della Mirandola is interpreted as a prophecy expressing the fate of the New European era (by M. Heidegger). Several aspects could be distin-guished in this prophecy: the throwing of man into the world without his place, form and purpose, the right and demand to define both place and form and raison d 'être by reason. Historically, special exper-iments of solving the fundamental mystery are considered - what it means to be human from Descartes to modern transhumanistic projects of human self-construction? The meaning of the New Time era is de-fined through J. Pico 's proposed existential task. It is emphasized that at every historically special stage of subjugation of the nature of man, the dream of almighty condensed in the strange topos of about-being. Faced with the impossibility of defeating death, and without abandoning new projects of its sub-jugation, the modern era generates existential substitution. Suffering is put on the scene of death as the main representative of evil. The result is euthanasia technologies that view death not just as a lesser evil compared to suffering (pain), but as the most radical mean of achieving the new goal - radical pain relief. A thought experiment is being conducted to demonstrate the possibility of self-destruction of mankind motivated by the desire to solve the difficult problems of mankind in the way of its euthanasia.

“Old” Natives and “New” Immigrants: Beyond Territory and History in Kymlicka's Account of Group-Rights

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-227
Author(s):  
Darian Heim
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
Will Kymlicka ◽  
New Immigrants ◽  
Building Process ◽  
The Right ◽  
Do So

According to Will Kymlicka, only historically and territorially bound “national” groups can engage in a “nation-building” process. Recently arrived immigrant groups cannot as they have neither been able nor willing to do so. The paper argues, first, that such empirical facts are insufficient for the normative conclusions Kymlicka defends; and second, that if his ultimate goal is to achieve better “terms of integration” for immigrants, he cannot deny them the right to attempt their own “nation-building”. As an illustration, the paper describes Kymlicka's own thought-experiment of Chinese immigrants in Canada pursuing a nation-building-process analogous to the Québécois. It explores how criteria for advocating group rights other than history and territory – desert, participation, or need –avoid treating old and new minorities in an arbitrarily asymmetric manner.

Movement Litigation and Unilateral Disarmament: Abortion and the Right to Die

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (04) ◽  
pp. 880-907 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard S. Price ◽  
Thomas M. Keck
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Judicial Politics ◽  
Right To Die ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Constitutional Politics ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
Policy Field ◽  
Counterfactual Thought ◽  
The Right

Detractors have long criticized the use of courts to achieve social change because judicial victories tend to provoke counterproductive political backlashes. Backlash arguments typically assert or imply that if movement litigators had relied on democratic rather than judicial politics, their policy victories would have been better insulated from opposition. We argue that these accounts wrongly assume that the unilateral decision by a group of movement advocates to eschew litigation will lead to a reduced role for courts in resolving the relevant policy and political conflicts. To the contrary, such decisions will often result in a policy field with judges every bit as active, but with the legal challenges initiated and framed by the advocates' opponents. We document this claim and explore its implications for constitutional politics via a counterfactual thought experiment rooted in historical case studies of litigation involving abortion and the right to die.

Who Counts as “People” (narod)? A Reconsideration of vox populi in the First Russian Time of Troubles (Smutnoe vremia)

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 168-178
Author(s):  
Isaiah Gruber
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The People ◽  
Time Of Troubles ◽  
The Right

This article is intended as a thought experiment on the meaning of the Russian concept narod, generally translated “people,” during the Time of Troubles (Smutnoe vremia) of the early seventeenth century. The topic is significant, since in this period the Muscovite politico-religious elite propounded a notion of vox populi as a legitimizing and even decisive force in determining the right course of action for the entire realm. Two closely related concepts, the so-called zemskii sobor (Assembly of the Land) and the idea of Holy Russia or Rus’, have been much debated in historiography. I argue that these historiographic discussions could benefit from more emphasis on the fundamental linguistic concepts of the time, as distinct from the later conceptualizations of historians. The present reconsideration of the meaning of narod, or who was included within notions of “the people,” suggests that language as much as anything else played a role in the dramatic historical shifts that have shaped Russian culture to this day.

QUALIA AIN'T OUT HERE EITHER

Think ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (54) ◽  
pp. 31-35
Author(s):  
Christopher Searle
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Spatial Proximity ◽  
Causal Connection ◽  
Reductio Ad Absurdum ◽  
Functionalist Theory ◽  
The Right

What follows is a short thought experiment that aims to show, reductio ad absurdum, that narrow qualia internalism is probably inconsistent with a physicalist/functionalist theory of mind. Those wishing to rebut the argument presented here will need to demonstrate why spatial proximity and the right sort of causal connection of functionally isolated components are necessary to the instantiation of qualia.

scholarly journals A right to die for prisoners?

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-66
Author(s):  
Angelika Reichstein
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
The State ◽  
Right To Die ◽  
Assisted Dying ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Duty To Protect ◽  
Utopian Thought ◽  
The Right

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore whether, although the state has a duty to protect prisoners, there should nevertheless be a right for prisoners to decide when and how they die. Design/methodology/approach Utilising a utopian thought experiment, the paper covers a series of interrelated issues: the aims of punishment, the functions of prisons, the rights of prisoners and the responsibilities of the state towards inmates. While the paper takes a European focus, it is of interest to a global audience, as the philosophical ideas raised are universally applicable. Findings As the right to die advances in society, so should it advance for prisoners. Once assisted dying has been legalised, it should also be available for dying prisoners. Originality/value The question has so far not been analysed in depth. With an ageing prison population, however, it is vital that we start engaging with the problems posed by an ageing and dying prison population.

Statelessness and the Poetry of the Borderline

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyndsey Stonebridge
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

In his 1976 essay, ‘The Borderline Concept’, the psychoanalyst, André Green wrote: ‘I can be a citizen or heimatlos (homeless), but to “be” borderline – that is difficult for me to imagine.’ This chapter takes Green’s writing on the borderline as a starting point for reflecting on the condition of statelessness. How might we describe a poetry of the borderline? And how might such descriptions help us think again about the geographies of modern writing? The chapter addresses these questions with a study of two poets from different ends of the same history of exile and displacement: W.H. Auden, whose voluntary 1939 departure from England coincided with the first convulsion of national frontiers in Europe, its colonies, protectorates and mandates, and the Oxford-based Palestinian poet, Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, whose writing captures the reality of today’s borderline living with an original clarity. Like his friend, Hannah Arendt, Auden’s writing is a thought experiment in imagining different forms of human and political belonging. Eighty years later, writing out of the same history, Qasmiyeh’s remarkable 2008 poem, ‘Holes’, brilliantly refuses to authenticate his own suffering for the benefit of others. This resistance against the terms of literary humanitarianism is a powerful claim for the ‘right to have rights’.

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